SOUNDBITES

A Generous Way of Being

Soundbites from past Virtues & Vocations convenings

“Moral formation is about three basic things: helping people restrain their selfishness, helping people find a purpose in life—so they have something to shoot for, and teaching people how to treat each other with kindness and consideration.”

David Brooks
author & commentator

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“I’m hopeful about the transcendence of the human spirit. There’s a lot to be discouraged about these days. I understand that. I try to live free of the polls—the political polls that say this and that quite unreliably, I believe—and stay much closer to my experience of the folks I know well, what’s going on in my own neighborhood, in my own community, where I see people doing life, giving things and contributing to life in all kinds of ways.”

Parker Palmer
author & educator

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“Everybody wants to think that it matters that they were here on this earth. So, what did they accomplish? What did they contribute? Who did they love?”

Clayton Spencer
former president of Bates College

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“This is how I explain collective values to my child: Carbon atoms are the same in both graphite and diamonds and it is just the bonds between them that make them different. It’s the bonds between us that determine our strength, whether we will fracture or whether we can withstand pressure. It’s not us as individuals, we’re all just individual atoms. It’s only when we arrange ourselves in a way that protects each other that we can really shine.”

Rana Awdish, MD
author & physician

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“It’s not hard to be good. It’s not hard to do the right thing. And what we’re talking about is not rocket science. It’s sort of Christianity 101. It’s helping the person in need. It’s helping someone across the street. It’s just acts of kindness, and when you do it enough you become conditioned to do it, it becomes character. And all of the sudden it’s not small acts of kindness—though they persist, you never get away from that—but you’re thinking of big change and scaled transformation.”

John Silvanus Wilson
author & former president of Morehouse College

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Fall 2024